Absolutely correct.
Several witnesses have talked about reality. The reality is that we absolutely must have the oil from the oil sands. There are no other sources of energy that can come on stream quickly enough to replace them.
The number one priority for this government and for you, as a finance committee, is to figure out a way to triage the environmental impact of the conventional energy sources we already have. Therefore I'm suggesting that if you tinker to some extent with this capital cost allowance, please do so in a way that will encourage innovative technologies to be deployed.
As I've said, encouragements for R and D don't really work. It is capital cost instruments and taxes that in many other countries have been shown to encourage the rapid deployment of innovative technologies in a commercial way.
I'm suggesting that since the oil sands are absolutely needed but pose an environmental challenge for us that we use this tax structure to help the oil sands producers and those who live in that area produce those oil sands with mitigated environmental impacts, which we can do by the deployment of new technology that can be encouraged by tax measures.